Top 10 Comics of the Decade. A difficult task, the top ten list, as some of my fellow Techlanders (Techlandites? Techlandians?) have already remarked. I’m a nerd, of course, so at first I tried to find some quantifiable metrics to determine The Ten. But when sales numbers and movie tie-in revenue dollars didn’t pan out I changed tactics. I went with my gut.

I scribbled out the top ten comics I could remember loving from this past decade. Well, that list was no good either. Finally, I went the long way. I put to paper every single comic I have ever loved. Be it stand alone graphic novel, or ongoing series. That list, littered across two notebooks and a few text docs was over 50. And from there I culled it down through research of what actually came out this decade and a little raw instinct.

Picking just ten comics was brutal. I feel like I was betraying some of my dearest friends. I was digging through my drawer boxes like an archeologist. Thousands of books. And looking at what I’ve come up with it still seems slanted, biased. But here were my criteria:

Great art and the test of time. First, great story telling can support poor art but c’mon, these are comics and I run column called Panel of the Week. Great art is a must (usually). Next, I favor a lot of complete runs here. There’s something to be said about letting a writer and an artist tell a complete story without having to hand it off to the next team. Stand alone tales that have no tie ins, no crossovers, and need no other issues to tell a story. These are what stand the test of time.